Avant-garde with a Young Approach

Thomas Eisenhardt, (born 1961). Self-taught dancer, visual artist and choreographer. Founded Åben Dans in 1997 along with dancer and theatre director Lisbeth Klixbüll as an innovative forum, in which artists in the fields of dance, music, theatre and the visual arts can meet.

Artistic Profile
Åben Dans blends humour, madness, seriousness and aesthetics in tenacious pursuit of what dance can express when it is brought into a new context.  In addition to traditional dance performances, stand-up dance, dance improv, dance concerts and ecclesiastical dance are just some of the types of dance on the program.  For example, the company is touring for the second year in a row with the very unconventional Børsen Road Show [The Bourse Road Show], which uses dance, the spoken word, and video to focus on the relationship between art and business.

The name of the company mirrors its open structure in which collaboration with other choreographers and dancers across genres has great significance, even as collaboration with artists from the fields of music, visual art and architecture plays a central role.  Although the body is always at the centre.
Eisenhardt’s very sculptural idiom bears the stamp of his past as a visual artist.  His choreographies reflect an unflagging curiosity and reflection about philosophical themes, including the interplay between nature and society, between body and soul.  He interprets these difficult themes in an easily understandable form of dance that speaks directly to a wide audience. The company calls this distinctive feature “popular avant-garde”.

Current Productions

Arme og Ben - og noget ind imellem / Arms and Legs – and Something In-Between
(Premiere March 2007)
An energetic dance collage full of humour, madness and deep seriousness, focused on the body.  It takes its starting point in the questions: What is the body? What can it do – and what is it supposed to do?  Must the body be strong?  Must the body be beautiful?  Do you understand the body? Does the body understand you?  Can the body speak?  Is the body mute?
Performance for children between 9-12 years old.

New Valueâ
(2006)
Yet another round of stand-up dance with political undertones – this time about the contemporary values debate and the relationship between art, religion and politics. With unconcealed irony, New Value registered NV â (also called simply Ny Værdi) unveils its bid for “a new, up-to-date religion – an ethical principle for the people and society of the future”.
Language versions: Danish and English

Blueprint
(2006)
A visual and musical exploration of the eternal split between body and soul in modern man.  With the very sculptural idiom of his poetic performance and with flashes of hilarity, Eisenhardt’s past as a visual artist is clearly sensed.  At the same time, there is a robust interplay between the Danish music scene’s one and only Peter Bastian and percussionist Marilyn Mazur.  The musicians are on the stage and go head-to-head with the dancers:  “Music is the soul and the body is the body,” says Eisenhardt. Premiered January 2006.

Børsen Road Show / The Bourse Road Show
(2004)
Stand-up dance with satirical and biting political undertones.  Inspired by business road-shows, the performance focuses on the modern cocktail of art and business.  In a sprightly fusion of dance, theatre and performance art, three choreographers, a director, a video artist, and an electronica-percussionist stage the prejudices surrounding these two spheres and ask what they can learn from each other in a funny and thought-provoking way.  The production will undertake its second tour of Denmark in 2006.  See also Erik Pold’s profile.
Language versions: Danish and English 

Review Extracts

”Original, sick and funny satire. Børsen Road Show is a wildly entertaining and acute, no-holds-barred satirical stand-up performance that in very original ways forms an alliance between art and business. The concept is good and the style consistent.  From start to finish.” 
Århus Stifttidende (DK), Børsen Road Show
 
”Hilarious – at times, grotesque and eerie, with all sorts of compulsory associations and involuntary karate moves right on its heels … As one teenage girl said afterwards to her jazz-freak parents, ‘That was amazingly good. I can’t get over it.’”
Dagbladet Information (DK), Blueprint

”It is the body itself and its movement that are primarily in focus in this inventive, dynamically varied and humorous choreography.  But in a symbiosis with music and beautiful lighting, the many imaginative, tortured sculptural body formations create a wealth of associations from Greenland figures to funny jungle animals.”
Berlingske Tidende (DK), Blueprint